The oldest plush in the world that museums can firmly date is a mohair teddy bear from 1904 to 1905. Plush means a pile fabric, and Steiff dates its first mohair plush bear to 1902.
Stuffed animals made of felt or printed cotton survive from earlier, back to 1892. This guide sticks to objects that still exist and carry a catalog record. The broader story sits in our history of stuffed animals.
What Is the Oldest Stuffed Animal in the World?
The oldest stuffed animal toys we could trace in museum catalogs date to 1892. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, holds uncut cotton panels for a stuffed owl, rooster, and kittens printed that year. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History holds a sewn cotton cat marked with an 1892 patent date.
Older stuffed toys exist, but they are dolls rather than animals. A felt elephant from 1880, when Margarete Steiff started her toy business, would beat them all. We found no public museum record of one.
The Earliest Form of Stuffed Toy Is a Doll
The earliest form of stuffed toy in museum collections comes from Roman Egypt. The British Museum describes a coarse linen doll made between the 1st and 5th centuries AD. It is stuffed with rags and pieces of papyrus.
Egypt’s dry ground explains why these survive while later cloth toys rotted. Dolls have their own story, told in our piece on the first doll ever made, but they set the floor here. Any claim to an older stuffed toy would have to beat roughly two thousand years.
Stuffed Animals That Survive From the 1890s
Uncut panels at Cooper Hewitt
Some of the oldest stuffed animals were never actually stuffed. Cooper Hewitt holds a set of 1892 printed cotton panels from Arnold Print Works of North Adams, Massachusetts. They came to the museum as a gift of Harvey Smith.
The panel titled “The Owl” shows front, back, and base pieces of a perched owl. Sewing instructions are printed in the center. Because nobody cut it out, the 40-by-60.5-centimeter sheet shows the toy exactly as a shopper bought it.
A sewn cat at the Smithsonian
The finished version survives too. The National Museum of American History catalogs a 6.5-inch cotton stuffed cat with a patent date of 1892. A stuffed hen and a stuffed dog in the same collection carry the same year.
That patent date matches the “Tabby Cat” patents of July and October 1892, recorded by the National Archives. The museum lists the cat as not on view.
A Steiff felt hen at the V&A
The oldest Steiff animal we found in a public catalog is a V&A felt hen of about 1900. It is built from layers of colored felt and stuffed, the museum says, probably with straw.
Its wire legs end in loops. The V&A reads them as fixings for a wooden base, which would make the hen a ninepin, or bowling skittle.
The Oldest Plush in the World Is a Bear
“Poley,” about 1903
The V&A’s “Poley” is a German bear in very short white mohair, dated about 1903. It is jointed at the neck, shoulders, and hips, with felt pads and black button eyes. The catalog names no maker, and a coarse yellow cotton dress and bonnet came with it.
A blank-button Steiff, 1904 to 1905
This V&A bear has the tightest date of any early plush bear we found. The catalog explains why the bear can be pinned to two years.
| Maker | Margarete Steiff GmbH |
| Date | 1904–1905 |
| Material | Mohair plush, stuffed with excelsior (wood wool) and kapok |
| Marks | Blank ear button |
| Size | 40 cm high |
| Museum no. | B.253-2000 |
“Steiff blank button teddy bears were only made in 1904 and 1905.”
Victoria and Albert Museum, catalog record B.253-2000
According to the record, the bear belonged to Professor C F C Hawkes, born in 1905. Steiff buttons carried an elephant before 1904 and the Steiff name afterward.
A Missouri bear and other contenders
The Missouri Historical Society holds a beige mohair bear dated 1904 to 1905, catalog number 1949-068-0001. Its record says the bear “is believed to have been made by the Steiff company,” a careful phrasing worth copying.
Other early bears have strong paper trails. The Smithsonian’s Ideal bear of about 1903 appears in our teddy bear history. Teddy Girl, a 1904 Steiff, is covered in our guide to teddy bear museums.
| Object | Date | Holder | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| “The Owl” uncut panel | 1892 | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian | 1964-53-4 |
| Sewn cotton cat | 1892 patent date | National Museum of American History | 291032.0002 |
| Felt hen ninepin, Steiff | About 1900 | V&A | MISC.303-1983 |
| “Poley,” mohair bear | About 1903 | V&A | MISC.320:1 to 3-1991 |
| Blank-button Steiff bear | 1904–1905 | V&A | B.253-2000 |
| Beige mohair bear, probably Steiff | 1904–1905 | Missouri Historical Society | 1949-068-0001 |
Why the Oldest Plush Is Hard to Name
Museum dates come with hedges, and those hedges matter. “About 1903” and “probably Steiff” are honest statements of what the evidence supports. A dealer who drops them is selling confidence the catalog never claimed.
Date ranges cause the same trouble. A Google Arts & Culture story supplied by the McCord Stewart Museum lists a Steiff plush cat dated 1890 to 1910. A twenty-year window could hold the oldest plush animal of all, or one made after the bears above.
Read three fields before trusting any “oldest” claim: the date qualifier, the maker attribution, and the marks. A blank or elephant button narrows a Steiff bear to its first years. A bear with no marks can rarely be dated closer than a decade.
Our verdict is narrow on purpose. The oldest plush in the world with a firm museum date is a Steiff bear of 1904 to 1905. “Poley” and the Smithsonian’s Ideal bear could be older, if anyone can tighten their “about 1903.”
The bigger unknown sits outside public catalogs. An 1880s felt Steiff elephant may survive in a private collection or a company archive, and it would change this list overnight.
Sources
- The British Museum, “Rag doll,” Roman, 1st–5th century AD, bmimages.com
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, “The Owl,” 1892, 1964-53-4, collection.cooperhewitt.org
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History, “Cat, Stuffed,” catalog no. 291032.0002, si.edu
- National Archives, NHPRC News, August 2021, “The Ithaca Kitty,” archives.gov
- Victoria and Albert Museum, “Soft toy” (felt hen), Steiff, about 1900, MISC.303-1983, collections.vam.ac.uk
- Victoria and Albert Museum, “Poley,” teddy bear, about 1903, MISC.320:1 to 3-1991, collections.vam.ac.uk
- Victoria and Albert Museum, “Teddy bear,” Margarete Steiff GmbH, 1904–1905, B.253-2000, collections.vam.ac.uk
- Google Arts & Culture, with The Strong National Museum of Play and the McCord Stewart Museum, “10 Stunning Stuffed Toys by Margarete Steiff,” artsandculture.google.com
- Missouri Historical Society, “Steiff Teddy Bear,” 1904–1905, 1949-068-0001, mohistory.org
2 thoughts on “Finding the Oldest Plush in the World in Museum Records”